Goldman to ramp up campus hiring of engineers by 30%

Of the Goldman's 33,000 employees globally, around 9,000 are engineers and programmers - more than that of leading tech firms like Twitter.Sreeradha D Basu | ET Bureau | Updated: July 25, 2017, 09:15 IST

Over the last four years, Goldman's hiring of engineers from Indian campuses has increased from 120 in 2014 to 250 in 2017.Global investment bank Goldman Sachs is banking heavily on engineers to play a pivotal role in the road ahead, as data and automation dramatically transform the way the financial industry does business.

Goldman's Bengaluru office — which now employs the largest number of engineers after its New York headquarters — intends to increase not just lateral hiring, but also ramp up campus recruitment numbers by 25-30 per cent this year as the company leverages the local talent pool to make a larger push into technology.

"Hiring engineers is a top priority for us in India. We are leading the push into innovative technologies like machine learning and data analytics through this talent pool," Gunjan Samtani, co-chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs Bengaluru, told ET. "Our 2018 class will be the largest class we would have brought in to date. We remain upbeat and bullish about 2019 as well," Samtani said.Over the last four years, Goldman's hiring of engineers from Indian campuses has increased from 120 in 2014 to 250 in 2017. Summer interns in 2016 numbered 200; this year it has gone up to 370. The investment bank visits eight IITs (Banaras, Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee), three IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) and four NITs (Allahabad, Surathkal, Trichy and Warangal).

This year it plans to bring in three to seven new IITs within its ambit. The firm has been engaging actively on campus at IITs through its GS Quantify engineering challenge. Into its fifth year, the programme has seen more than 2,700 students participating till date.

The word 'engineering', for roles at Goldman Sachs, refers to individuals solving complex problems through math and software.

Engineering professionals come from diverse backgrounds including STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) — 37 per cent of global campus hires last year came from STEM majors.

Of the firm's 33,000 employees globally, around 9,000 are engineers and programmers — more than that of leading tech firms like Twitter.

At the Bengaluru office, engineers will be onboarded under two broad umbrellas. The first will be specialists — strats — with backgrounds in maths, computers science, statistics and engineering. They build financial models, algorithms and other quant solutions like those being built for electronic trading systems, models for risk management as well as those for compliance.

"Within the software development umbrella, we will hire engineers to do core engineering work. This involves software and infrastructure engineering for data, communications, collaboration, as well as client-facing businesses and also for managing our software," Samtani said.